Kate Bush and Lorde feature on birthday album for Dalai Lama

Other musicians included on The Art of Peace: Songs for Tibet II, include Bob
Geldof, Sting and Elbow

Kate Bush and the Dalai Lama

By AFP

6:17PM BST 02 Jul 2015

Peter Gabriel, Sting and Kate Bush are among the big-name artists who have contributed a mixture of new, remixed and previously released songs for "The Art of Peace: Songs for Tibet II", an album set for release on July 7 – the Dalai Lama's 80th birthday.

The album also includes songs by newer artists, in the hope of reaching out to a younger generation. Eighteen-year-old singer-songwriter Lorde, and Icelandic folk-pop band Of Monsters and Men, are two acts aimed to appeal to younger listeners.

Rupert Hine, the British songwriter and producer who coordinated the musical selection, said that the Dalai Lama "is used to the people who are already sympathetic to his ideas. He felt that he needed to be more focused on younger people who are perhaps not as familiar with his message."

Other contributors include Beyond, a spiritual singing quartet that stars Tina Turner, activist and former Boomtown Rat Bob Geldof, and alternative rockers Elbow.

Proceeds will go to the Art of Peace Foundation, which works to preserve Tibetan cultural heritage.

The album follows the first "Songs for Tibet" album, which was released in 2008. Contributors included Alanis Morissette, Garbage, Dave Matthews and Rush. The record was released amid high tensions in Tibet, where an uprising against China's iron-fisted rule broke out ahead of the Beijing Olympics. The previous album "was inherently political, given that it was tied in with the Beijing Olympics," Hine told AFP.

The latest album aims to focus on the Dalai Lama's lifelong commitment to non-violence and compassion. Hine described the record as "a celebration of his 80 years on the planet."

The Dalai Lama has gained a wide following in Western countries, with celebrities such as actor Richard Gere and the late Adam Yauch, also known as MCA in pioneering hip-hop band Beastie Boys, publicly declaring support for the spiritual leader. Yauch helped organise Tibetan Freedom Concerts around the world, starting in 1996.

Beijing has increasingly tried to isolate the Buddhist leader, who fled into exile in India in 1959. China has blacklisted outspoken artists such as Björk – who shouted "Tibet, Tibet!" when she performed her song "Declare Independence" in Shanghai in 2008 – and banned the last "Songs for Tibet" album.

Duncan Sheik, who is best known for his 1996 hit "Barely Breathing" and more recently has had success writing for musicals, said that support for the Dalai Lama carried risks for artists looking to break into China's fast-growing market for music and theatre.

"You don't want to get yourself in a situation where you become persona non grata for a whole billion people, but I can't really control that, and I think what will be, will be," he told AFP.

A practising Buddhist, Sheik contributed "Sometimes", a song from his upcoming album that explores spiritual dimensions in everyday life.

"I do hope that the record is heard by as many people who might enjoy it as possible, and that it does filter in through the noise of the rest of the world and that they hear something that maybe moves them in a deeper way," he said.